re: Are MMO's dying?

I will say, though, that along with the negative effect of WoW, the genre also suffered from the need to min/max. That ruined everything.

Early EQ you had twisting and other creative uses of skills, PL'ing, no mob lock, imbalanced combos that were a ok, etc. that made it feel free and fun. More like the wild west. As the genre became more popular, the need to lock everything in to "one way to play and progress" to make sure they could control everything was the design choice. That was spearheaded by WoW but was mostly driven my player imbalances. Smart, connected, well versed players could game the systems frequently in early MMOs.

The threat of someone stealing your kill was a part of EQ. And it made it exciting. As that went by the wayside, it lost a sense of adventure. Granted, more games needed better abilities for repercussions and non PvP servers suffered for that, but there were better ways of getting around the problem other than just locking everything in.

Even on a PvE server, if you were out in the wilderness, you are at some sense of risk in EQ. I never got that sense in WoW.

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Voice chat has been around for a long time. I remember using Teamspeak in EQ in 03/04.

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It was, but it was still considered a luxury back then. You might have had elite guilds like FoH that required it for raiding, but the vast majority of players back then didn't use it.

You also still had players like I was, playing on dialup. That meant I could either have voice chat or play.

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Also, consider that there was no limit (for the most part) to the number of players who could attend a raid. You could literally raid a boss with 100 other players.

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You could but unless a group was experienced they would probably get not just themselves slaughtered, but the rest of the raid as well. Do too much damage or healing and you risked pulling aggro from the tank. Exp and first access to the loot were awarded to the group that did the most damage, that all combined to make it not very worthwhile for extra groups to participate enough to make a real difference. Although it was completely possible you just didn't see much in the way of zerg fights since there would be no payoff for most of the participants.

By contrast, in some current games there are still open world bosses that could be zerged and everyone would get experience and loot, but they don't (or rarely do).

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This doesn't really have to do with the difficulty of the combat though.

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I think it sort of does. With the exp penalty becoming worse as you leveled it made people focus more. It also made the potential for dying stressful. More focused generally meant you were playing better which meant the devs could make more demanding opponents.

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I hated that. fricking casters I actually liked the change they made for total damage and putting the loot lock on.

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, but...

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Everything else though, not so much. I made a LOT of money in those early days fetching corpses.

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Bingo. It was cool that different economies popped up based on need. I did some crazy corpse runs back in the day.

I just feel like there isn't nearly that much freedom in post-WoW MMOs. Everything became too constructed and produced. There was no creativity.

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It was, but it was still considered a luxury back then. You might have had elite guilds like FoH that required it for raiding, but the vast majority of players back then didn't use it.

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I feel like it was more common than you think. I wasn't in FoH or a high end raiding guild yet I used it a few times. Combat is slower pace too which means more time to type out instructions and time to read them.

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You could but unless a group was experienced they would probably get not just themselves slaughtered, but the rest of the raid as well. Do too much damage or healing and you risked pulling aggro from the tank. Exp and first access to the loot were awarded to the group that did the most damage, that all combined to make it not very worthwhile for extra groups to participate enough to make a real difference. Although it was completely possible you just didn't see much in the way of zerg fights since there would be no payoff for most of the participants.

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I still feel like the coordinated tap dancing WoW raids sometimes require make the raids more unforgiving than EQ, but when I played EQ, I never did much raiding beyond some Nagafen/Vox and some PoP.

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I think it sort of does. With the exp penalty becoming worse as you leveled it made people focus more. It also made the potential for dying stressful. More focused generally meant you were playing better which meant the devs could make more demanding opponents.

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Dying in EQ wasn't "that" bad, especially once Clerics received their 96% rez ability.

The only class in EQ that really reminds me of a modern MMO is the bard with all the hotkeys that have to be clicked to keep songs active.

As a paladin, I mainly just had to cast stun every once and awhile to maintain aggro. Also, most fights are against a single mob. Usually if 2 or 3 were pulled by mistake, one of your group members had a mesmerize ability to keep them passive until you kill the rest.

I just remember being able to grind XP while having active conversations in guild chat or in private /tells. Cannot easily do that in WoW and maintain DPS.

Pretty sure saurfang and the tauren are gonna convince Nathaniel to dark Phoenix sylvanas.

Ffxi in it's Glory days was fun as frick.

75ing dark Knight sucked though

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...a confusing as hell crafting system.

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I'm currently playing GW2, I have 18 max level characters, and all 18 have full ascended gear. The majority of which was crafted by yours truly.

It's the first game I've ever played where I was able to equip so many of my characters with the best armor and weapons.

The secret? You make all four of the time gated materials each day...Deldrimor Steel Ingots, Spiritwood Planks, Damask Bolt, Elonian Leather Square...and use what you need, sell what you don't to buy more of what you do.

Once you get a system of gathering and crafting down, it's like an assembly line.

I remember going rancor hunting early on. Had to get a large group together and go off into the wilderness. Also the witches were pretty tough as well.

Is that a smaller version of how the game had people that used the market to their advantage?

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Wifey and I just pre-ordered the WoW expansion and 6 month sub. That’s probably as long as we will play it. We don’t really raid anymore so the longevity factor is lessened. I don’t know if MMOs are dying but the days of me logging on every free moment are certainly gone.

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The time sink required to be a Mythic Raider is borderline, not capable for a working professional.